Tavern talk

As I roam through New Eden, there are any number of little things that I find interesting, but which don't really merit a post of their own. These sorts of topics are the kind of thing that I imagine pirates might chat about over a pint at their local space tavern between comparing fits and bragging about killmails.

No pressure

We had our first of what will hopefully be a weekly T1 cruiser roam. The trouble with organized roams is that the FC is under pressure to find content. Unfortunately, we spent about two hours roaming null sec without seeing anything but a battleship gang with carrier support. We didn't want content that badly...

Then we hit low sec and crashed a gate camp, but they all fled. On the way back to Chaos we cross-jumped a 160+ cruiser fleet, and a couple of their straggling inties managed to point a Moa that was fit for dps rather than speed/agility. We tried to burn down the tackle (a Malediction), and forced him to warp off, but there were enough other ships on grid that by the time the Malediction had been driven away he had been replaced by half a dozen other tacklers.

Racial differences

One of the interesting things about going on a T1 cruiser roam is that you start to see the handling differences between the different racial cruisers. The Caldari cruisers, for example, were always the last to hit warp, and the last to land on grid. It's easy to miss those differences when you fly solo, but seeing the ships all flying together in a gang really made them stand out.

A call to arms

A Tusker fleet tangled with Riplomacy last night. I'd love to write a full battle report, but there was no general call-to-arms ping sent out until they chased us back to Chaos. At that point I logged into my Omen, and warped to the fight on our null sec static.

It was a blind warp, and as is so often the case, the fight had moved on, so I landed in the middle of the Riplomacy fleet. I attracted a lot of fire from ships that had nothing else to shoot (as they were being kited by the main Tusker fleet), but their tacklers were too occupied chasing the main fleet to deal with my surprise arrival. So, by overheating my prop mod, I was able to burn out of long point range and bounce back to our citadel at 10% shields so that I could get some reps. Along the way, I helped take down a VNI, because the Oracle has amazing dps projection.

I had no time for reps, though, as Riplomacy moved the fight to our C5. Warping to the fight, I managed to help bring down a Sacrilege before Riplomacy decided to disengage completely.

Incidentally, a look at the Chaos battle report gives you a very clear picture of what Tusker fleet doctrine looks like. 'Doctrine', though, is perhaps too strong a word. 'Philosophy' might be a better term. Be fast, be shield tanked, and bring dps, reps, or ewar.